Prevalence and Predictors of Self-Medication Practices in India: A Systematic Literature Review and Meta-Analysis

BACKGROUND: Self-medication (SM) is a practice of using medications to treat the self-diagnosed symptoms without legitimate prescription by a health care professional. Alongside posing burden on to a patient, SM practices are associated with certain unfavourable health conditions such as drug-resistance, adverse effects, drug-interactions, including death. OBJECTIVE: To systematically review and quantify the prevalence of SM practices and its associated factors in India. METHODOLOGY: A comprehensive systematic search was performed using scientific databases such as PubMed and Cochrane library for the peer-reviewed research articles that were conducted in India without any language and date restrictions. Studies which are cross-sectional by design and assessing the prevalence and predictors of SM practices in India were considered for the review, and all the relevant articles were screened for their eligibility. RESULTS: Of 248 articles, a total of 17 articles which comprises of 10,248 participants were included in the meta-analysis. Overall, the mean prevalence of SM practices in India was observed to be 53.57%. Familiarity with the medication appears to be a major reason to practice SM (PR: 30.45; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 17.08-43.82; 6 studies), and the practice was noticed more among individuals from a middle-lower class family with a prevalence rate of 26.31 (95%CI: 2.02-50.60; P<0.0001). Minor ailments were the primary reason for practising SM (PR: 42.46; 95%CI: 21.87-63.06), among which headache was the most commonly reported (PR: 41.53; 95%CI: 18.05-65.02). CONCLUSION: Prevalence of self-medication practices are observed quite high in India. While, NSAIDs and anti-allergic are the most frequently utilized self-medicated drugs used for headache and cold & cough.